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The day i started preparing for gmat , i somehow had the feeling that i will breach the 700 mark.I dunno why i had that feeling , but anyways.

I started with a Barrons (took it from library) , after a few days gave a diagnostic test in which i was able to have 33R,4W in Quant and 31R,10W in verbal.This was definitely a easy test but not a bad start (i thought).

Then i started working on my verbal with Kaplan.Kaplan was definitely tuff , but with some thorough reading i was able to score decently in the practice test.Even scored OK on the complete verbal test in the book (32R,9W).

Was doing Quants parallely from Kaplan and other sources and was kind of satisfied with my scores on them.

Also got the 800score book from kaplan and was really happy to see myself cracking the questions that are supposeto be the among the toughest

Then i ordered the OG , tried a few questions and kept the book untouched till the last few weeks of my exam (thought it will give some real good material to work on in the last days and hence might build up confidence).

Ordered Kaplan comprehensive in the month of July (my exam was on 26th July).Started working on it pretty late , but still the questions didnt scare me much and i was able to get a hand over them.

I was totally lost !! But then consulted a few friends and they said Kaplan is tuff (didnt help me much to gain my confidence though).

I thought now i wont give the other 2 tests of Kaplan and will just give the Gmat prep 2

Gave the Gmat Prep 2 on Wednesday , 23rd July

Score : 640

this was a huge blow. I was really upset.But then some how made up my mind and went back to OG (was doing OG all the last week , especially in the last 3 days).Completed the various questions in Kaplan and OG which helped me build my confidence as the speed was good and so was the accuracy.

Then came the main day :

The 2 essays went fine.

Quanta was OK but i took more time than usual (went a bit complacent)in Verbal i think i was not pretty bad initially , but then realized that again i was running short of time and then i had to Skip a whole RC passage making wild guesses.In the end i realized that verbal didn't go good but suddenly when i saw the screen with my scores .. man !! i was broken apart in a 1000 pieces!

Everything was gone and i was left with a meager score of 630.

**Also one thing that i felt towards the last week was that i was quite comfortable reading and solving questions from the book but when was doing the same through a computer i was not that confident.

Please let me know as to how should i improve upon my scores.I want to breach the 700 mark any which ways possible (ideally 730-740)

I'm looking at your spread and it seems like you just ran out of time. I think running out of time can cost alot since you are basicly half guessing at least several of the question.

I personally take the exam with kind of a preset time, like I planned it where I had goals for every 10 questions. I gave myself like 30% of the time for the first 10 question, 55% to reach the middle, 80% for the next 10. Something like that would be good. I always have the clock on.

PS.As for you studying, As you should know from reading the forums, Kaplan is usually much harder than the actual exam. But personally I think if you can get passed it's demoralizing effects, it actually helps more then hurts you. I heard 800score is completely a waste. _________________

If you go thru mba.com, most important piece of advice they give, pacing is crucial!! I think due to lack to time, your accuracy might dropped in the actual test. I would suggest retake, if you can..Use timekeeper posted by walker,its very good tool. Keep checking yourself after every 15 minutes or so on the practice test and finally stay cool. Gmat is just an exam, there are lot of other things in the application to present.

Stallone,Lot of recent test takers have complained regarding the tough math and weird verbal score recently. If you have seen the quants are along the line of OG then you are fine. Go to a thread by bhatiagp where you will see a lot of people have complained getting verbal score around V27 or V28. Even people have started suspecting scoring flaw in verbal section. I am surprised to see a lot of test takers keeping 27 in verbal whereas they have consistently done well (V40+) in the GMATprep and other CAT tests. Now I am afraid to take a recent date for the test. So my best suggestions is you should go through all OG materials including OG supplement guides (both verbal and quant) and paced yourself to finish all CAT tests in time. Once you give sufficient CAT tests timing will be the second nature and you can easily manage time in the real test.good luck _________________